CF-19 Failure to recognize HD loading OS

Hi all. I have a question regarding my CF-19 toughbook. It's a CF-19CJBAABM. I have no idea of it's lineage other than it's build config on the back. I bought it on fleabay, it came with an 80g hd, no OS, bought as parts.
Power on is good, stuff in setup screen shows as recognized (hdd and such). Connect a USB cd, with an OEM XP disc, I get "setup did not find any hard discs installed on your computer, make sure they are properly connected, configured, wah wah wah... setup cannot continue, to quit press F3" so I run some software I have, it finds some errors on the HD, (couple bad sectors) but nothing that should cause that, but I was planning on getting a solid state drive anyway to quicken things up. Picked up a Samsung 128G 840 pro series ssd, installed in the carrier, all looks good, tried to install OS, same thing. hmm.... search, search... pulled cmos battery... no change, same non-hd recognition.
So here I am, looking at this.... Official Support Download Center of the Drivers, Manuals and FAQs | TOUGHBOOK | TOUGHPAD | Panasonic Global Notebook PC
It's telling me to put the driver for sata on a floppy..... heh... what's that? lol... but seriously, is there a workaround for this? I put the sata driver on a sd card, setup won't recognize that.... would it see a thumb drive?
I booted the machine up with an ubuntu linux disc, all seems well, it sees the hd, I formatted it to ntfs to be sure
I've burned enough neurons tonight, it's 5, time to quit this silliness, tomorrow is really going to suck, but am I barking up the right tree?
Tempting to just run linux, but I have some windows software I would like to use with this one. (GPS specifically)
Thanks for any insight.

 

There are a lot of How to manuals on the web. Just search for ur real problem with ur preferred search engine: installing windows xp sata drive without floppy

Also in these forum u are not the first one with this problem: http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/390478-reinstalling-xp-panasonic-cf-19-a.html

enjoy

 

How old is your XP install disk? Is it SP1, SP2, or?
Is there a year on it?
It sounds like your install disk is so old that it does not include a SATA driver,
the work around is to provide them on a floppy that the install program will
look for. See if you can find a detailed description for how to do this online or
find a newer install disk with the drivers.

 

Look in bios to make sure the drive is recognized.

 

Thanks folks, got it now. Needed a couple hours shuteye and some reassurance I was on the right path.
Good link onirakkiss, much appreciated. The link in the post you linked to from Mick 711 to make the USB thumb drive bootable was just the thing.
For anyone else that gets to here from a search with similar issues, this is what you would be looking for:
EEEguides.com: Install Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC
And, yes Pete, the OEM XP install disc was too old to have SATA drivers, 2001 vintage, a bit before SATA came to town.
Setup is completing as I type. Thanks again. My CF-50 has a tougher cousin now.
WOO HOO!

 

Is that going to get you to SP1? Have you done the SP1 to SP3 recently?
It is better not to use windows update, just download the updater - I think.
My recent install did not go very well so perhaps someone else will offer some
advice.

 

I haven't done anything recently, this box is new to me, old to the ebay seller. the above worked to get it up and running on XPsp1. Biggest thing is to get it to run on the sata hd, then you're away. Still fiddling with drivers on and off tonight. I updated to sp3 first (with updater), then messed with drivers. Easier that way in my head only... shouldn't make any difference really, but seems to me to have less potential for errors to get the OS to where you want it, then fuss with drivers.